Brussels (Brussels Morning) The EU and the US should agree to set common rules for categorising green financial investments, France’s Finance Minister, Bruno Le Maire, argued when he met US climate envoy John Kerry, Reuters reports.
“I proposed to (Special Envoy) John Kerry that Europe and the United States have an identical taxonomy”, Le Maire told a press conference after Wednesday’s meeting. “It would be a shame if at the end of the day we had two sets of rules in Europe and the United States”.
Return to Paris
Le Maire and Kerry also discussed carbon border tax adjustments, a proposed tariff-imposing tool that would let carbon-taxing countries levy fees on goods manufactured by non-carbon-taxing economies.
US President Joe Biden returned his country to the Paris Climate Accord, reversing the decision by his predecessor Donald Trump to pull out of the greenhouse gas curbing treaty. Biden’s special climate envoy Kerry emphasised that the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters were not yet “sufficiently on the road to meeting” the global target limit set by the Accord.
Sustainable transition
According to Kerry, some 2.5 to 4 trillion dollars would be needed globally over the next three decades to finance the transition to an environmentally sustainable global economy, underscoring the need for major economies to make sure that the pathway to net-zero emissions by 2050 remains an option.
Kerry and Le Maire also said they would jointly study efforts to enlist private capital in the fight against climate change. “We have to bring together growth and the environment, and the United States once again shares this goal”, Le Maire said.“Finance is the sinew of this war for the climate”, he declared.
